Letters To You
by InnitMarvelous-archived
Summary: Excerpts from Pepper's letters to Tony starting with six months after his death. ENDGAME spoilers!
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Today marks six months since I first saw **Avengers Endgame** in the theater.

It's been hard getting past the loss of Tony and I know I am never going to enjoy the MCU as much as I did while Tony and Robert Downey Jr. were in it. I love Tony Stark 3000 forever and from the bottom of my heart I say thank you to RDJ for bringing Tony so wonderfully to life for 11 years!

I hope no one **ever** plays him on the big screen again because they'll never ever come close to what RDJ gave us!

Forgive the shortness of most of the chapters but as I said in the notes, these are excerpts from Pepper's letters to Tony.

**Summary:** Excerpts from Pepper's letters to Tony starting with six months after his death.

* * *

Six months.

Today is… it's been six months since I've seen you lying there beside me when I open my eyes in the morning. Today is… it's been six months since I could call out to you… and have the voice I LOVE so much… the voice I love more than any other in this world reply to me and hear you reply to me by calling me Honey or Pep or maybe even… probably both.

I miss you, Tony. I miss you so much that it literally, physically _hurts_. I know I told you that we were going to be okay. But you want to know something? I lied. I lied with every fiber of my being because you were… you were dying before my very eyes and you were in pain. Oh Tony, even though you were trying to comfort me, I could tell you were in such agony. You were hurting so much but you were still fighting to hang on for me… for Morgan… for Rhodey and Peter. I couldn't take watching you try to hang on for us, knowing how bad… how excruciating the pain you had to have been in, and that's why I lied to you. I knew if I didn't, if I didn't give you the okay to let go… to rest… you would have kept on fighting and as much as I didn't want to have to watch the light leave your eyes… I couldn't keep watching you struggle to hang on.


	2. Chapter 2

So here I am alone, so profoundly alone six months later, trying to figure out _how_ I am ever supposed to get over watching you die like that. I don't know _how_ am I supposed to get over the fact that I won't ever hear your voice say my name again. How am I supposed to get over never seeing your eyes, your _beautiful_ eyes light up, or watching your hands gesturing wildly as you get excited over something?

The nights I've had to endure without you... maybe the word survive is a better word... yes it is a more accurate word because I don't feel like I am enduring. I feel like I am just existing... existing with the sole reason... purpose of making sure our daughter gets through this without being too scarred by your death. She's so young, Tony, and she misses you _so_ much and it's been so hard to explain to her _why_ you won't ever come back to her.

To us.

To me.

I'm going in circles with this, aren't I? But that's how it is with me now. There are days I think I am starting to get better, starting to heal maybe just the tiniest little bit, and then something happens to let me know that _no_ I am **not** healing, that I was only deluding myself. Something happens, like the other day I was watching the news... they've stopped talking about you so much now by the way... it's either that or FRIDAY is filtering out now the mentions and video from the little bit of news I am watching these days. I couldn't watch the news to begin with, like at all, because everything was all about the Avengers... it was all about _you_... and about Nat... and what happened five years ago and just six months ago. Endless tributes and memorials for you both, and I just couldn't take listening to them or seeing them anymore because it was **all of the time**!

I know I am going in circles and rambling. But what happened the other day that renewed my agony of the fact you're not here anymore is I had on the news... stick with this, this time Potts... and they mentioned some kind of sciencey... is that even a word? They mentioned some kind of breakthrough, and now I can't remember what it was, but I am sure you would have been looking into as soon as the words left the mouth of the reporter. I can picture it in my mind right now. I can see you getting on the phone with Bruce right that_ second_. I can hear you asking you if he saw the report. I can hear you talking with him, probably for hours on end about it. You would have given me an absentminded kiss, probably, and would have gone to your workshop.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** This might be a _little_ disjointed but um Pepper's grieving and probably has a short attention span.

**P.S.** \- THANKS for the reviews, anon! I agree with you 1000%!

* * *

It's forty-two days until your birthday, Tony, and then just eighteen days after your birthday it will be Father's Day. Right now, thinking about facing both of these days without you here, is almost setting me off in a panic attack. I bet you were not expecting me to say panic attack were you? No, I don't think you were because before I lost you, I was able to control the impulse to panic better. But life without you isn't what I would imagine I'd be going through right now, and when I am faced with going through a special day or holiday without you, I… I just don't know how to handle the feelings they bring with them.

But panic is actually what I experienced when Thanksgiving was staring me right in the face just after one short month following your death. How could I face celebrating a holiday meant to express gratitude for the blessings of my life when I felt like I had just had the biggest blessing of my life ripped away from me just weeks before hand? I didn't know... I just didn't know _how_... until the day actually came.

I won't lie and tell you it was easy, going through a day that is supposed to be filled with all the people you love by your side, because it wasn't. It was anything _but_ easy but I... Morgan and I were not alone. We literally were _not_ alone on that day because not only did Rhodey and Happy come to be with us but also Peter and his aunt, May, along with the Bartons, and the Langs and by Langs I mean not just Scott and his daughter but also his ex-wife and her new husband... the three of them have a kinda... odd relationship, especially when you throw Scott's girlfriend into the mix. And if things were strange enough with all of them here, Hope also brought along _her_ parents too!

I could tell that Hank Pym was trying his best to be as nice as he could be under the circumstances, but I think he would have rather have had Thanksgiving in his own home with just his own family. Although he was as nice as he could manage to be, I could still tell that he was uncomfortable in general, and I sensed it was not just because he would have rather been at home. Maybe it was because… didn't he and your father have some bad blood between them, Tony? In the end it doesn't matter, and I doubt I will ever lay eyes on the man again after this time.

There is a large part of me that wishes the rest of the Avengers would follow his example, and never come back. I can hear you asking me why, Tony, because as you would say it is so unlike me to shut anyone out. As I rule I don't shut people out, even when I do not like them for whatever reason. But the same part of me that wants them to follow Hank Pym's example by staying away is also the part of me who wants to blame them for your death. The part that whispers to me when I am laying there, cold and alone in our bed, that you would be there. It tells me that you would still be here with me every night, holding me in your arms if they hadn't told you there was a way to make time travel work.

In the end though I know it's not their fault, just like your death wasn't your fault or even mine. Yes, I have blamed myself for your death so many times since you died I have lost count. I know there was no other way for you to have peace because if you still here with me without having tried, the guilt would have consumed you.

I love you, Tony, but I wish you had been less of a hero.

I laughed out loud after writing that sentence because you being a hero is simultaneously one of the things I hated and loved the most about you. I hated because I was always afraid you would get killed saving other people even as I was so proud of you for being willing to put it all on the line for others. I don't know how anyone in this world could not see you for who you really were underneath the armor you wore on the days when you were not Iron Man.


	4. Chapter 4

_You can rest now._

The last words I said to you before you... before you left me forever are, strangely enough, is the one thing that has been haunting me the most these past six months. Wait that's not entirely accurate, although it is a part of what has been haunting me. No, what haunts me the most besides the last words I said to you... or seeing your beautiful eyes so empty is what I said to you the night before you left to go join the others at the compound.

_But would you be able to rest?_

Those words are **forever** burned into my memory.

_Why_ did I say them? Why didn't I just let things lie where they had fallen? If I hadn't said what I said after you said what you said? If I hadn't said what I said then maybe we would have just gone to bed instead, and then the next day, I hope you would have thrown your time travel breakthrough to the bottom of the lake like you were saying you should do.

But as much as I try to look at this as an unsolvable puzzle, I know _why_ I said what I said. It's because I know... knew you too well, Tony Stark, and I knew if there was a chance, even the tiniest, most microscopic silver of a chance that you could bring Peter back then... then you _had _to take it, no matter what the other possible outcomes or risks were to you personally. What I have come to realize is that, it was a done deal once you had figured it out and that in the end my words probably didn't make all that much difference. They really didn't because you wouldn't have been able to live with yourself if you didn't at least try once you figured out how to return to the past.

Why then does it feel like I still played a part in your death?

_Why?_


	5. Chapter 5

**AN:** If you don't like the tone of this chapter, please just remember how much I **love** Peter Parker.

* * *

Peter.

Parker.

I know what he meant to you, Tony, but... I need to be nothing but totally honest with you now.

I know _how_ you would want me to feel about him. I know that you would want me to feel about Peter the way you did. I know that you would want me to love him just like _you_ did.

But, my dearest Tony, I don't know if I can...

I have **tried**.

Oh my, I have _really_ tried to feel the way I know you felt but so far I just don't and... if I don't know if I **ever** will ever be capable of it.

I am so sorry if this… inability disappoints you, or worse yet, **hurts** you and I wish I felt differently. But right now, almost every time I think of Peter, or when I see him running around. playing with Morgan all I can think of is how_ that_ **should be** _you_ playing with our daughter! Oh, okay maybe not the running around part, but you _know _what I mean.

Oh, Tony...

I don't hate Peter, but…

But I don't… can't exactly love him either.

I know that you made your choice, Tony, and I know it was **your** choice. It;s because you made the choice of your own free will is the sole reason alone that I don't hate him. It will be the only reason why I will _never_ hate him. But… there's _always_ a but, isn't there?

But the best I can do when it comes to how I feel about Peter is say that I like him. I think liking him might well be perhaps be all I can _ever_ do or ever be capable of _feeling_ towards him, and for you memory's sake I _wish_ it could be different. Oh how I _wish_ it… my **feelings** towards him could be different but as I have already told you, seeing Peter… literally each and every time I _look_ at him, it's a reminder to me of the reason why you're not here now with us. When I see Peter, the fact I now have to raise our daughter alone is brought afresh to my mind, and for that I am so sorry Tony, I truly am. But when I remember that only I will be here for Morgan over the coming years pushes away… and with almost certain finality rules out any chance I can or ever will feel any differently when it comes to Peter Parker.

I love you, Tony, but I'm not sure that even my love for you can help me overcome this.

I'm sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: **The book I mentioned in this chapter is a real one. Can anyone guess what it is?

* * *

Once in an autobiography of Russian Olympic figure skater that I read a sentiment that has never left me since I first read it. Although I realize how that then there was no way I could fully understand her words until right at this moment. You see the skater was originally a pairs figure skater and her partner was her husband. They'd just won gold at the Olympics like the year before he died. It happened during one of their training sessions in the following year after he collapsed on the ice and then died from a heart attack. It was a shock to everyone, especially her, because like her, her husband was young, fit, and healthy... or so they had all thought. It wasn't discovered until after he died that he had some sort of a congenital genetic heart defect.

I'm sure if I know you, and I most certainly_ do_ know you Tony Stark, I know you're asking me why I told you all of this?

I told you this because in the book she wrote about their lives together while trying to heal from her husband's sudden death, one of the things I remember her talking about is how, if it were possible, she would turn back the hands of time. She said she wished that she could start living her life in reverse just so she could be with him again.

I know very well how she felt when she wrote this because I feel the same way too.

I know how you want me to move on with my life, Tony, and I _am_ trying to move on. But I miss you so much, and if I were ever given the chance to live my life in reverse, I'd take it in a heartbeat without any second thoughts or hesitation.

* * *

**EN**: Thank you so** MUCH**, anon, for you comments! They mean so much to me! I would try to say more about them but it's late and I need to get to bed!


	7. Chapter 7

Tony, something of such staggering, enormous unfairness has happened that I can barely keep my hand steady enough to write this down.

Steve Rogers is an old man now.

What I mean is that he physically looks the age that his 1918 date of birth says that he is instead of still looking like the pictures of Steve Rogers I remember seeing in my school history books . So I know you're curious about _why_ he finally looks his age, and it's a long story, at least on his end of things but not so much ours.

Well Steve is old now because when he went back in time to return the Stones to their proper timelines, he decided to stay in the past. He won't really say what exact time he went back to or who he was with, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know he went back to his **own** time. I know that is what he did because isn't that what _any_ of us would do if we had been in his original situation and had gotten a second chance to live our lives in the time we actually belonged in?

I'm not upset if that's what he did because I of _people_, I can understand _why_ he did it. But at the same time the unfairness of the fact that he probably got the chance to be with _her_ (by her I mean your Aunt Peggy) of course when that should never have been remotely possible… that he used what _you_ figured out to cheat what was actually his fate of not getting to be with her.

_Yes _I am upset because I will never be able to do the same. I can't just go back in time like he did and live out my life with you. We had so much more to look forward to together, and it was stolen from us. You didn't deserve to die the way that you had to die. Our sweet, sweet little girl didn't deserve to have to grow up without you here and I don't think I did either.

You know it's hard feeling the way I am feeling because if you were here, I know you'd be happy for him. I have tried to feel the same way. I really have, Tony. But you aren't here, and you won't ever be again, and it hurts so much knowing that.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN:** Anon, thank you for all of your wonderful comments! They have meant so much to me!

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July 13, 2026

The sun has graced and left the sky one thousand times since you left us, Tony.

ONE THOUSAND TIMES.

How am I doing now, you ask?

I am better, I suppose. I mean I don't think about you every second of every day now like I did after you first left us. But I still think about you a lot and for as long as I live I won't ever stop missing you, Tony, or long to have you with me again. I know that I have Morgan, and I am so grateful that I do have her because having her with me makes the loneliness a little more bearable. I am mostly grateful that she's here with me because it means a part of you was left behind through her for me… for all of us who loved you. You were so loved, Tony, so very much loved. I hope you knew how loved you were when you…

Well, this is going to be shorter than what I usually write in one of my letters to you. But with this letter I have reached a decision. I probably won't ever stopped writing these letters to you completely, but I am going to reduce their frequency. They're not going to come several times a day or even once a day now. I am healing… or at least I think I am and I need to do what I have to do to move forward in that healing. I will **never** stop loving you, Tony, or missing you but I know you'd want me to be as whole as I can be from here on out. You were one of the best parts of my life, and I won't ever forget you or what it was like to be loved by you.

You are forever in my heart, my dearest Tony, I wasn't lying when I told you that you were all that I had.

Until next time, my love, sweet dreams.

Yours forever and a day,

Pepper


End file.
